


A Woman's Place

by Shazrolane



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Bechdel Test Pass, Gen, International Fanworks Day 2015, OFC is harassed verbally and physically on a subway, Women Being Awesome, the situation is resolved almost immediately
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-16
Updated: 2015-02-16
Packaged: 2018-03-13 05:04:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3368867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shazrolane/pseuds/Shazrolane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five women who knew their place in the world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Woman's Place

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the following challenge: _February's challenge is Never Have I Ever, and it's exactly what it sounds like. Write something you haven't written before. If you only write whump, do a romcom piece. If you predominately write Clint Barton, don't have him in your story at all. If 99.9% of your fics are oriented around a male character, pick a lady. Change the POV around. Find a new fandom. Find a new genre._
> 
> New things I did for this challenge - 5 female leads, no angst, no violence, no Clint, no Bucky, almost a 5 + 1

1\. The Maid  
Guadalupe made certain that her cleaning cart was pushed against the wall, so it wouldn’t be in the way of the men stalking all over the building. She knelt down to scrub at the sticky residue next to a garbage can as a man in a black suit walked down the hallway. 

“We’ve searched the entire building. He was never here,” a man in black combat gear said as he reported to the man in the suit. 

An office door opened and a man in a button down shirt, a tie and slacks came out. “Oh, he was here,” the new man reported as he fell in with the first two. 

“There’s no way!” argued the soldier, stepping in front of the geek and forcing him to stop. 

“How do you know?” the man in the suit asked.

“The data’s been copied, some’s been deleted, and a few key pieces have been altered. It’s subtle, I almost didn’t catch. This guy is good.”

“We’ve been watching everyone who’s gone in and out of this building for the past two weeks! We’ve talked to all of the employees who are still here and rounded up everyone who left. Literally everyone. We’ve run them all through interrogations and lie detectors. Pencil pushers, geeks, security, hell even the artists and photographers. Everyone passed. None of them took the data. It must have been missing before.”

“We checked before we started this assignment!”

“Gentlemen,” the man in the suit stepped in before things devolved into a shouting match. “Let’s sit down and go over what we know and what we’ve got. One way or another, we’re going to get our man.” They disappeared around a corner. 

Guadalupe finished cleaning the floor, and trundled down the hallway, continuing on her rounds. 

Four hours later, she finished, spent some time chatting with the others, then headed down the sidewalk towards the bus stop, her sensible shoes muffling her steps.

55 minutes later, she got off the bus and walked tiredly into her apartment building, pressing the button for the basement.

“How was it?” asked Coulson, as the elevator doors opened. 

“¡Qué fácil!” Natasha said, as she started to scrub off the make up.

2\. The Bitch 

The label changed over time. At first, it was mostly, “Waste of space.”

Then, when she made the first cut, it changed to, “Slut” because obviously she was sleeping with someone, right?

“Preferential treatment,” was next, when she was issued a Jericho 941 pistol because it was slightly (ever so slightly) smaller, allowing her to reach the safety and magazine eject button one handed, without shifting her grip. No one complained that Jones was issued a wrist stabilizing brace for his Sig Sauer later that month.

“Cakewalk,” was what they called her first successful assignment.

“Lucky,” was used when her missions had a higher than average success rate. 

When she started getting promotions, and moving up the chain of command, it changed to, “Bitch.”

But her favorite label, by far, was, “Assistant Director.”

3\. The Assistant

“Hey, would you get me a cup of coffee?” one of the men in the lab said as soon as Jemma walked in. He pointed, and she saw the coffee maker right by the front door.

“Oh, certainly,” she said, taking a mug from the stack. “How do you take it?”

“Black as my soul, little lady,” came the answer.

Jemma rolled her eyes at boys who thought things like that made them sound interesting, but she brought the mug over, then started looking for an empty station to start working at.

“I’ll take some General Tso chicken, and shrimp fried rice, and a Mountain Dew,” said the coffee drinker. 

“Moo shu pork here!” said someone else from behind the wall of ring stands and other equipment that was piled on the center counter.

“I’m sorry, what?” she asked.

“We get Chinese every Wednesday,” said the coffee drinker, whose t-shirt proclaimed _Chemists do it Periodically!_

“I...suppose that’s good to know,” she replied. 

“So chop chop, get on it!” said Coffee, turning back to his bunsen burner. 

“Why would I get your lunch order?” she asked.

“You’re the new OPS, right?” said the one behind the equipment.

“No, I’m the new chemical kinetics researcher,” she responded. 

“Oh!” Coffee wiped his hands on his jeans, and held one out to her. “Sorry about that! I’m Willy.”

“Otto!” came from behind the wall. “So you’re working for Dr. Simmons?” he asked. 

“No, I am Dr. Simmons,” she said with a smile. She looked around the lab. “Now, where is my station?” She turned the corner and looked in dismay at the lab counters, covered in the remains of old experiments. 

“Is she here yet?” 

“Professor Hall!” Jemma greeted as she ran forward to meet her advisor. 

“Jemma!” He smiled as he shook her hands. He turned back to look at Willy and Otto and frowned. “I thought I told you to clean this place up.” 

Jemma could see the panic in their eyes, so she stepped in. “They were just telling me that the new OPS quit, so they offered to clean a station for me.”

The grad students fell over each other to reassure her that yes, they were cleaning a station right now. 

Professor Hall seemed appeased, albeit a bit grumpily. “And take her lunch order, I need to get her up to speed.” 

The two of them were already in his office, deep in discussion, by the time Otto had returned with her lunch.

 

4\. The Pushy Friend 

“Hey! Hey! Hey you! You can sit here, sweet thing.” Darcy watched as the young woman looked over at the empty seat in between the two men, then reached up for one of the hand holds. It was far above her grasp.

“I’m talkin’ to you! Come on, we ain’t gonna do nothin’ to ya!” the men called out. 

She gave a nervous smile, but stayed where she was. 

_Good for you,_ thought Darcy from her seat a few feet away.

The train lurched into motion, and the woman fell a step to the right. As she tried to catch her balance, one of the men reached out and groped her. 

Darcy had had enough. Her taser didn’t have enough charge to take them both down at once, and she knew better than to think she could take on the two of them. But the day she had to resort to brawn over her brains was the day she handed in her Feisty Brunette Sidekick (™) card. 

“Alice! Oh Em Gee, I haven’t seen you in FOREVER! Come over here, girlfriend!” She reached out for the girl, who looked ready to cry, and yanked her away from the men. Darcy wrapped her arms around the other woman, pulling her into a deep hug. “Play along,” Darcy whispered into her ears. 

The young woman nodded, then said, "It's so good to see you!" Her eyes conveyed her thanks, then glanced over at the men who had been bothering her. 

Darcy smoothly stepped in between the woman and the men. “You would not BELIEVE what’s been happening to me. Okay, so I needed a science credit right?”

 

5\. The Glorified Secretary 

The names started right away, whispered in hallways and boardrooms. “Glorified Secretary” was the best of the things she’d heard. “Over her head,” and “Incompetent,” were common as well. 

She had instituted sweeping changes. She’d created measurable performance criteria for all of her executive team, including herself. The first year, none of them met their goals. None of them got bonuses or raises, including herself. That hadn’t endeared her to the executives, but she started to get respect from the underlings. 

The next year, she’d explained that her executives were now expected to spend one week out of every quarter working a job in their division. The head of marketing now understood that certain shades didn’t print well (after one particular disaster) and had given the artists more veto power. The head of sales had made it clear that marking everything a “priority job” meant that nothing had priority. The head of R&D had approached her for a complete teardown and rebuild of two floors, so that R&D and manufacturing could communicate more easily.

By the second year, every single executive had made their goals. Everyone in the company was expected to know the names of everyone who worked on their floor. Everyone was encouraged to give constructive feedback. A janitor commented that she found multiple copies of one report in the garbage every evening, which led to a consolidation and reduction in paperwork. In return, that gave most of the office workers 7% more time to focus on other things. 

Positive feedback was a company norm now. Once a day, each executive met with a low level person in their department and spent time talking with them about their goals and vision, their place in the company, and their personal lives. It hadn’t all been smooth sailing - there had been some significant turnover, and others had to be terminated. But the ones who stayed, they were a tight team.

Pepper looked over her team and smiled. Everyone knew, it was the secretaries who ran a company.

**Author's Note:**

> As always, this was made much better by the commenters at The Beta Branch, http://thebetabranch.prophpbb.com/ Any remaining mistakes are purely my own.


End file.
